Firefox trademark shenanigans (Re: Any chance of getting Firefox 2.0 into rawhide/FC6?)

[Mark Rosenstand]

On Sun, 2006-10-01 at 19:26 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> On 10/1/06, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> > I think the patch approval process can also be a constraint
> > on the Fedora Legacy team. Currently, Legacy is simply upgrading rather than
> > backporting,
> 
> Not familiar with the details on the differences between upgrading vs.
> backporting. Although I would have assumed upgrading was better.

Legacy is supposed to be "bugfixes only" - no? (If everything is just
updated, how is it different from the current releases?)

> > but what if they want
> > to work together with the Debian stable people on backporting fixes instead? I
> > don't think being shackled by a restrictive trademark agreement is what Free
> > Software is about.
> 
> I can agree with that. However, it is my understanding that what truly
> makes up the software, the code, is still "free".

It's not; you cannot modify it.

> > The trademark arrangement is
> > also one of the reasons F*****x doesn't (always) use the "early testing of
> > development versions in Rawhide" scheme which is successfully used for several
> > other packages (GNOME, kernel, KDE before we got the long-lived 3.5 branch we
> > have now etc.). (Yes, I said "one of", I know Chris Aillon also brought up
> > others.)
> 
> Seems like in the end, this only hurts the Firefox guys. If distros
> stop patching, and only use vanilla sources when they come along, then
> sucks for them.

And since Firefox it part of their product, the distro sucks too. And
there's nothing they can do about it.

It doesn't make any sense to worry about "patent encumbered codecs" if
restrictions like these are acceptable.